The present invention relates to a display for a vehicle, and more particularly to a display for an aircraft flight management system which also displays terrain features.
Modern map displays, particularly those used in aircraft for flight planning and monitoring, are capable of displaying a considerable amount of information such as flight planning information and terrain information. The terrain information consists of situational awareness (SA) terrain and terrain cautions and warnings which, among other things, may indicate where the aircraft may potentially impact terrain. The flight planning information consists of flight path information, altitude information and other information useful to a pilot or crewmember in following and anticipating the path and altitude of the aircraft over the ground.
A three dimensional representation of a flight path provides better spatial understanding of the planned flight path and therefore reduces the navigational workload for a flight crew. In particular, when a 3D terrain representation is used as an underlay for a 3D flight path display, the relative positioning of the flight path to the terrain can readily be seen. This aids in detecting potential flight path conflicts with terrain as well as planning for optimal paths around potentially hazardous areas. The 3D flight path display with a terrain underlay will also significantly enhance the perception of depth and relative location during the flight path visualization therefore reducing flight crew work load and providing more timely information about potential dangers along the flight path. There are significant challenges to producing such displays since such displays often must cover a large area of terrain. Generating the displays in real time with a large amount of terrain data presents significant difficulties for avionics flight management and display systems including the difficulty of performing the enormous computational tasks associated with providing detailed terrain representations over a large area.
The instant invention addresses the aforementioned difficulties by significantly reducing the computation and data load for producing the flight plan and terrain display for flight management systems. This is accomplished through the use of intelligent level of detail control which computes and displays flight plan areas and related terrain with a high level of detail. The outer terrain details, i.e., those further removed from the flight path are processed and displayed in a manner that shows all significant terrain features, e.g., peaks, towers, and the like, but with much less detail so as to significantly reduce the overall computational load for producing such 3D flight path displays. This ensures that all-important information relative to the flight path is correctly processed and displayed while secondary information is shown with important features to provide broad awareness of areas surrounding the intended flight path.